Free event
About
Head to The Hepworth Wakefield for an exhibition celebrating the launch of Empire’s Witness, a book commemorating the wartime experiences of Wakefield local Alwyn Day.
The exhibition, coinciding with the VE Day commemorations, will feature original diary excerpts and photographs.
About Empire’s Witness:
“In 1942, Corporal Alwyn Day left Britain aboard H.M.T. Abosso as part of a vast wartime convoy. He did not know where he was going. Like millions of ordinary soldiers, he entered a global conflict whose scale was almost impossible to comprehend from ground level.
He kept a diary.
What survived was not the language of generals or politicians, but something different, and altogether more personal. Dates. Places. Heat. Dust. Delays. Convoys. Fragments of daily life moving through the final years of the British Empire.
Decades later, that diary was rediscovered by his grandson, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker Philip Day, who began reconstructing the journey through military records, maps, photographs, and historical archives.
The result became Empire’s Witness: A Soldier’s Secret War Diary 1942–45.
This exhibition presents that journey visually. Through enlarged diary pages, archival imagery, maps, service records, and wartime artifacts, it traces a 27,000-mile wartime odyssey across three continents, following the little-known supply routes of the Persian Corridor through Iraq and Iran during the Second World War.
At its heart, this is not simply a story about war. It is about memory, silence, endurance, and the ordinary people who carried history on their shoulders without expecting to be remembered.”
The exhibition marks the forthcoming publication of the book on 6 June 2026, the anniversary of D-Day. Signed copies of the will be available.
Venue opening hours
Monday : Closed
Tuesday : 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Wednesday : 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Thursday : 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Friday : 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Saturday : 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Sunday : 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Access facilities
- Accessible Car Parking
- Accessible Toilet
- Assistance Dogs Welcome
- Baby Changing Facilities
- Changing Places Facility
- Hearing Aid Loop
- Step Free Access
- Wheelchair Accessible
Venue Details
Find us at
Gallery Walk, Wakefield, WF1 5AW
Phone
01924247360
hello@hepworthwakefield.org